THE MORNING LIST
The Music section team offers you, in the order in which they were released, a selection of albums published in September and which have been appreciated and reviewed on our pages. The art of miniature by Hungarian composer György Kurtag, a new line-up from American band Built to Spill, the fourth album of stylish Afro-funk and electronic tricks from quintet Bibi Tanga & The Selenites, Beth’s subtle atmospheric pop Orton are, among others, on the program.
« Kafka-Fragmente », but György Kurtag
Composed in 1985-86 and dedicated to the psychologist Marianne Stein who had helped the musician some twenty-five years earlier to emerge from the existential abyss in which he was holed up, according to his own words, “like a cockroach”them Kafka-Fragmente constitute the ultimate expressionist tendency of György Kurtag. The Hungarian composer, born in 1926, declines in a dizzying way his art of the miniature from a few phrases borrowed from various texts by Franz Kafka (Journal, Wedding preparations in the countrysideCorrespondance).
Very brief for the most part (a few tens of seconds), these forty fragments are incredibly rich, from both a local and global point of view and, above all, they do not seem in any way unfinished. The principle of walking, spiritual or anecdotal, constitutes its unity and duplication, its symbolic perspective. From Kafka to Kurtag, like from the violin to the voice. In the chiselled interpretation of Anna Prohaska (soprano) and Isabelle Faust (violin), these fragments are to be heard like bursts, in every sense of the word. Pierre Gervasoni
1 CD Harmonia Mundi (released September 2).
« When The Wind Forgets Your Name », de Built to Spill
Although less popular in Europe than their compatriots Pavement and Dinosaur Jr, Built to Spill remained on the other side of the Atlantic among the most influential figures of alternative rock of the 1990s. Its founder, guitarist and singer Doug Martsch, originally from Boise (Idaho), only permanent member of this formation with variable geometry, has recorded eight albums, including the essential Perfect from Now On (1997) et Keep It Like a Secret (1999). Rough guitars stand out in it, allowing bold melodic progressions, its singularity resting moreover in Martsch’s nasal and acute timbre.
When The Wind Forgets Your Name unveils a new formation made up of a Brazilian rhythm section, Lê Almeida and João Casaes, both escaped from the psychedelic jazz-rock group Oruã. Within this virtuoso trio, Doug Martsch draws an electric vigor, from the memorable twisted riff of Gonna Lose ; the groovy bass of Rock Steady with its elegant flight of Mellotron; or vibrant pop Spiderweb, whose chiming arpeggios recall fond memories of the first REM. Frank Colombani
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